Enlightenment Through Understanding

Who Is in Charge?

This is a perfect example of what Moldbug, referencing Carlyle, referred to as chronic kinglessness.

This is the secret of politics and modern society: nobody is in charge, no one has power, and nobody is running the show: not the people, not the corporations, not the politicians, not the bureaucrats, not the courts, not the military, not the journalists, not the bankers, not the white male patriarchs, not the SJW’s, not the Jews, not Davos, not the Bilderbergs, not the Tri-lateral Commission, not the Illuminati, and not the lizard-people.

Everybody likes to posit that some bogeyman composed of people they dislike is in charge and running, ruining, things behind the scenes because that is comforting. Even if a conspiracy is leading to disaster, at least we’re being led. Even if they are evil incarnate, at least they know what they’re doing and are leading society in a specific direction. It is comforting to know someone is in charge, even if we hate them.

To some extent this is true: no one in western society has divine power (the divine rights of Kings), but rather power often concentrated by a bureaucracy of sorts. At the turn of the millennium we saw the rise of so-called ‘fabian socialism’, a form of government where power is concentrated not by the proletariat (Trotskyism, Leninism) but rather by bureaucracies (Stalinism), with the likes of Bill Gates (in 2000, the most powerful man in technology, who having recently retired from Microsoft to work on ‘global philanthropy’), Warren Buffet (the most powerful man in business and close friends with Gates), George Soros (the most powerful man in finance), and Bill Clinton and Tony Blair (at the time the most powerful statesman alive, and still quite powerful), as ‘thought leaders’ and ‘evangelists’ that ‘jet set’ to the World Economic Forum in Davos to discuss how to improve ‘global welfare’ for people that they otherwise want nothing to do with, so much so that they have chosen to seclude themselves in the one of the most remote but expensive parts of the world to do so. At around the same time, in 1999, the Euro was formed, and the European Union was extended. It’s a paternalistic state where corporations and bureaucracies have control, with leftist social policies on issues such as immigration, where both commerce and nations have ill-defined borders. It’s similar to classical liberalism, democratic socialism (but really more like social democracy), and neoliberalism, but opposite of anarcho and libertarian socialism – the latter which reject concentrated forms of power. This continues to this day, 16 years later, with Obama and Mark Zuckerberg filling the ranks of a ‘global elite’ with socialist tendencies. Even with Brexit, not much has changed. But that’s pretty much who is ‘in charge’, at least as far as much of Europe is concerned. America is slightly more individualistic and power is concentrated among the president and so-called ‘executive orders’ that can override congress.

But on a more abstract level, power may not be exacted by a tangible entity (a king, a bureaucracy) but rather by forces (such as economic or cultural) beyond anyone’s control – inevitability, fatalism, and predestination. Despite all the cries for change against the ‘status quo’, things tend to remain constant, albeit with small changes here and there. Although Free Northerner says there is a ‘power void’, there are no shortage of people or targets to blame for disenfranchisement, for feeling ‘left out’. There are always ‘elites’ in one form or another. If nothing were imposing their force, there would be no resistance. So there is power somewhere…or maybe all of these ‘small oppressors’ are a symptom of a bigger problem. Democracy give the illusion of individual power, which more and more people are seeing through for the ruse that it is, so perhaps absolute monarchy is the alternative, which by having total power, is more empowering for individuals? Democracy and ‘freedom’ means always having to prove yourself, people having to fight a ‘mental war’ against mediocrity to ‘rise to the top’, whereas a consanguineous nobility and power structure means that people at least know their place in the hierarchy, but more importantly can come to terms with it instead of fighting it.